Friday, November 11, 2011

11 Things I think you think I think about Sandusky situation

I read the 23 page grand jury document. It’s
revolting. Actually I didn’t read all 23 pages. I had to skip some paragraphs due
to their nature.

My heart grieves for the children – many who are
now adults - who were abused by Sandusky. I pray they somehow find peace.

I think Joe Paterno had to be relieved of his
duties. I think it’s impossible to gracefully fire someone in that situation.
The man had served the university for 60 years. He did a lot of good things and
had a wonderful impact on many people. The man’s not perfect (only one was). I
doubt this was his only mistake, but it was most likely his most egregious one.
Put yourself in the PSU Board’s shoes:

You’ve got a long term employee and a beloved
public figure. Some have contended for a few years that his time is past. But
ignore that piece. Focus on the beloved and faithful employee.

You find out that at least 9 years ago – and probably
13 - he found out about a legal issue. He didn’t do the right thing. As an
enabler, he enabled a continued cycle of sexual abuse for years to come. His inaction
in his role led to tens of millions of dollars of potential exposure to the
institution.

You just cannot ignore the inaction that exposed
your organization to millions of dollars of losses. Factor in the child sexual
abuse that was enabled, and you cannot have a big going away party for the guy
with 100,000 of his closest friends on Saturday. You have to pull the plug.

My thoughts regarding McQueary’s
role in this are confused.A quick story about myself: When I was 28 years
old (17 years ago) I was working a new job as an accountant. The company had
recently gone public. My wife of 1 year and I had just poured every cent we had
into a down payment on a modest suburban home. We had no cash left. No
financial reserves. After a few months, I realized the company was misstating
their financial position. Now, the ethical thing to do is to report the
malfeasance, right? Well, let’s throw some other dynamics in there. As I said,
I was cash poor. The auditing firm, who would get sued if the financial
misstatement were uncovered, was my former employer. If I go all whistleblower
on everyone, my concern was that I would never get a job in accounting again.
Whistleblowers don’t have good job prospects going forward. What did I do. I
talked to the General counsel of the company. He blew me off. I found a job and
was out the door in less than a month. I did not take my beef to the SEC. In
hindsight, I chickened out. The company collapsed
under the weight of its financial problems 2 years later.

So, how does this relate to McQueary. He’s 28
years old, as a graduate assistant at his alma mater and where he grew up. Sandusky was the d-coordinator when McQueary was QB. So, McQ’s trying to climb
the coaching ladder, making no money as a GA and he catches
Sandusky in the shower with a kid. He probably figures if he takes
this too far he loses his job, potentially his career. We can all say he would
have been a hero, and that’s true. But sometimes heroes die. Or their careers take
seismic career shifts. In our nature, we seek self preservation. It is only
through self discipline or deference to a higher power that we look out for
others. It took some level of courage to even tell Paterno. Yes, he should have
done more. But I understand at some level the conflicting emotions that
McQueary went through. I can tell you I had many sleepless nights as I went
through my comparatively simple issue, and I would imagine he’s had a few as
well.

The Penn State fans who are angry at the Board
of Trustees are just making themselves and their university look stupid. You
have to get rid of the President and the Coach for what they knew and didn’t
do. 1989 was the year of rapin’ dopin’ shootin’ at OU, as well as NCAA
investigation, I had just moved to Texas the previous year. I was embarrassed
to be a Sooner grad. I had busted my butt at college to get a diploma and then
some student-athletes, who lacked proper moral leadership from their coach,
made some pretty idiotic decisions. As a Sooner expatriate in Texas, it was
frustrating. Penn State fans, I can assure you, the “us against the world/media/board
of trustees” mindset is just silly. You’ve lost perspective at that point. Kids
were sexually assaulted. This was identified several times. You should be
humbled, not defiant.If you're one of those kids that was assaulted, or parent of that kid, what's going through your mind as you watch hundreds of people deify a man who enabled a monster?

ESPN’s coverage of this was absolutely awful.
It’s like they were the apologist for Penn State from the beginning. Twisting
the coverage to “did PSU Board of Trustees do the right thing by firing Joe by phone” and "it was only a few students rioting" bit is
insulting. They had no presence on site.

The rush to judgment on this is appalling. We’ve
all failed somewhere along the way. Some of us fail in socially acceptable
ways, some don’t. Let’s let the facts come out in a normal course of legal
proceedings.The rumor mill is not going to solve things.

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Sooners were people that left early in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. Boomers were a group of citizens that had illegally entered Indian Territory earlier in the 80s in an effort to open it up for white settlement. (A special shout out to Rob M for the correction.) For some reason, my blessed alma mater chose the nickname Sooners for the name of the athletic teams. Some of our foes refer to us as LandThieves, since a Sooner is someone who cheated and got to the land before they were supposed to. For some reason, the tagline, "Sooners, cheating since 1889" has never caught on. At least we're not the Oklahoma Thunder or Wind.